Custom software
You know the spreadsheet. The one that runs something important, that only two people understand, that everyone is slightly afraid of.
Every business has one
Sometimes it's a spreadsheet. Sometimes it's a shared inbox, a whiteboard, an Access database from 2011, or a process that lives entirely in one person's head and goes on holiday with them.
It exists because your business does something specific that no product on the market fits. So somebody built a workaround, and the workaround became load-bearing.
Custom software is worth building when the workaround has become expensive — in hours, in errors, in the risk of it depending on one person. Not before. If a product on the market does 90% of it, buy the product; we'll tell you that for free.
What we build
- Operations platforms
- Systems for the workflow your business runs on, matched to how you actually work rather than how a vendor assumed you would.
- Replacements for legacy systems
- Migrating off software that's unsupported, unaffordable, or unmaintainable, without losing the fifteen years of institutional logic buried in it.
- Integration layers
- Middleware that makes your existing systems behave like one, when replacing them isn't realistic.
- Compliance and reporting tools
- Where the requirement is specific to your sector and generic tools force you to work around them.
How we scope it
- We watch the work being done
- Not a requirements workshop with managers — sitting with the people who use the current process, watching what they actually do, including the workarounds they've stopped mentioning because they've become normal.
- We look for the process problem first
- Sometimes a workflow is broken and software would automate the brokenness at speed. When we find that, we say so before quoting a build.
- We scope the smallest useful version
- Custom software fails most often through ambition. The first release should replace one painful thing well, be in real use within months, and grow from there against real feedback.
- We plan for the person who inherits it
- Documentation, tests, and readable code, because custom software you can't maintain is a liability with a launch party.
Before you ask.
Higher upfront, frequently lower over five years — no per-seat licences, no paying for modules you don't use, no annual price rises. But it's genuinely not always the right answer, and we'll tell you when buying wins.
Web App Development
Every web app is fast on day one. We build the kind that's still fast on day nine hundred.
Intelligent SystemsWorkflow Automation
Your systems are fine. It's the space between them where the week disappears.
Software DevelopmentAPI Development & Integration
Integration is where estimates go to die. Usually because the estimate assumed the other system behaves.
Tell us what you're trying to build.
A 30-minute call, no charge and no pitch deck. Describe the problem and we'll tell you how we'd approach it, roughly what it costs, and whether we're the right team for it. If we're not, we'll say so.
30 minutes · No charge · No deck